Imprudent: Chapter 18: Plots

Chapter 18: Plots

Traditional prophetic magic, forecasting, depends on a number of factors. Foremost of these are the Rising Breath, the Stone and the Sand, the Mechanism, and Knowledge, although most people only acknowledge the first two or three of those.

The Rising Breath is the most well-known part of forecasting magic, simply due to its ubiquity. Every person, regardless of age or station, upon waking from sleep deep enough to dream, has a single Breath with which they can foretell the future. This Rising Breath, which is a different color from the norm, can be exhaled into a quartz die—the Stone. If the person forgets to hold their Breath before willing it into the die, it will be lost in a cloud of glowing haze, and most people do not make regular use of their Rising Breath for exactly this reason.

###

Lady Fiaswith of House Rechneesse

Hands clasped behind her back, Fia paced across the carpeted floor. The carpets in the chamber they’d been given were extraordinarily fine, and she wondered if the master who had made them was still… existing? Alive?

Well, that was a question whose answer wouldn’t help anyone, so she pushed it aside and turned to the rest of her group, with the addition of Illgina. “First, we need a plan.”

“What, no ‘blast our way in, dealing with getting shot as we go, and blast our way out’?” Yufemya asked dryly. “Where’d the woman who charged into fifty oathwalkers dressed in her underwear go?”

Fia gave Yufemya a flat look that made Zoy snicker. “She got to go home and wants to do that again.” She shook her head and continued. “I’ve tangled with the Dormelion navy in the past, but that was mostly sneaking past patrol boats guarding the Straits and a few convoy escorts here and there on the east coast of the Center Sea. And while that was survivable, I know that their army is their specialty. So let’s plan.”

Stylio gave an approving grunt. “The most difficult part will be finding the scroll, I feel. Kasmenarta is massive and crowded. Even though it will be held in a secure area under the firm control of the Emperor or one of the bureaucracies, that is still a significant portion of the tower.” She shrugged. “But not impossible. There will be sources of information available that will note the arrival of something valuable.”

Zoy scoffed. “You say that as if… certain people aren’t probably already considering how they’d steal it themselves if the chance came up.”

“True. But getting access to them will not be simple.” Stylio tapped her chin in thought. “We need funds. For bribes, supplies, and other such resources.”

“And where will we get that?” Oksyna asked.

“Some coin from my father, I get can,” Illgina spoke up. “Such riches in the vault are stored.”

Raavi nodded. “When Oksyna and I were in there, I saw a few chests filled with gems and coins.”

“Yes. A ransom expecting we were, so coin gathered was,” Illgina said.

“Perfect. We’ll need anything small, valuable, and easily sold,” Fia said. “That’s something I can handle with my own contacts when we need it, but for travel on the Lynx, portable wins out over value.” Illgina cocked her head for a moment, confused, and Fia clarified, “We only have so much room on the ice-boat, especially with another person, so gold and gems would be better to bring than, say, silver, because they’ll take up less room.”

“Ah. Thank you. I see what you mean.”

Fia bit her lip as she considered what to do next. “Can we get some notepaper or something to keep this all straight? Notes would be helpful.”

“I saw an easel and pad in another room,” Raavi volunteered, and hopped off of the couch, followed quickly by Oksyna.

As the door closed behind them, Fia shook her head. The young woman was obviously interested in him, but this was apparently passing the young man by completely. Stylio was likewise smiling, and gave Fia a knowing wink. Before anyone could say anything, however, the pair of them were back, carting in an easel, a large pad of cream-colored paper, and a small pot of writing utensils.

A few moments later, they had it set up, with initial notes written out.

Funds: Coins and gems from the Gehtun vault. Prioritize small, valuable bits.

Finding Scroll: Information sources in Kasmenarta

“Good setup, Raavi,” Fia said. “Hmm. Timing is going to be a thing. We need to do this as quickly as we can.” She tapped her elbow with a fingertip as she held her arms folded. “How long will it take us to get there?”

Yufemya spoke up. “Judging by the map and using our prior traveling speeds as a guide… ten to fifteen days.”

“Hmm. That’s not great. We’re past Mid-Winter, and we’ve got less than forty more days until the sun rises again. Once that happens, I don’t think the Lynx will be viable as a means of transport.”

Raavi shook his head. “I doubt it too. Maybe a bit past Sunup, but the canals will start melting within days as we get more and more sun per day.”

“Also the bulk of the Army will be coming out of wintersleep around then,” Zoy offered. “Right now, they’ll have just enough people in the tower to keep the place under control. Once spring arrives, they’ll have significantly more people available to hunt us down.”

“That’s a charming thought,” Fia said dryly. “All right, so we have, what, ten days in the city to find the scroll, steal it, escape, and get back here?”

“Or less, given that we’ll have to get back across the White Mountains,” Raavi pointed out. “We’ll be going downhill, more or less, on the way there, but getting back will take longer.”

“Oh, that’s a wonderful point,” Fia replied and sighed as Raavi looked stricken. “I’m not angry at you, Raavi. It’s a good point. It’s just… frustrating.” He nodded, his face and shoulders relaxing at her reassurance. “So we don’t have much in the way of time, unless we want to take a different route back. I might be able to get us in contact with some smugglers, but we’ll need a place to hide in the city until the seas are safe for us.”

“We’ll need to lie low regardless,” Stylio said. “If we successfully complete a theft, they will be searching any outgoing traffic intensively, and there will not be much of it at that time of the year. So we will almost certainly have to wait until after sunrise anyway.”

“Oh, great. All right, that helps with some of our timing problems, and adds more,” Fia groused.

“Well, I do have a potential place for us to go to ground, assuming it is still in existence,” Stylio said helpfully.

“I’m listening,” Fia said.

“Some old contacts in the undercity. I will hopefully be able to call in some favors and get us a secure place to stay and hide. We will likely have to help them in return, however.” She gave a small smile. “Not that it will be a significant problem for us, I feel.”

Fia frowned, but shrugged. “Fair enough. We’ll have to see. And, of course, we need to find the scroll and steal it.”

“Planning that will have to wait until we have better knowledge on where and how it is being kept,” Stylio said, and then frowned as well. “It occurs to me that we should stop in Westernfellsen and tell the King there about the situation. Not everything,” she added as Fia opened her mouth, “but that a peace process is in the works and the self-preservation motivations behind it.”

Fia considered for a moment; her political skills were not the greatest, but Stylio did have a point. On the other hand… “If we tell him, what’s to stop him from trying to arrest us and say that this war is in his favor, since the Gehtun are about to have a major problem with their labor supply?”

“That is a point. At the same time, we might want to at least update him on something. He was planning on fighting a war, and if we can get him to hold off and establish a defensive posture…”

With a sigh, Fia nodded. “That’s a possibility. We’ll have to see.”

“Good it would be,” Illgina said, folding her arms. “Losses enough taken we have. A full war disastrous would be.”

“You realize that he might try to take you hostage, right?” Zoy said.

“Understand that I do, but worth the risk I feel it is.”

Fia frowned, but nodded. “All right.”

Raavi spoke up. “What about when we get to Kasmenarta?” He cocked his head towards Illgina. “She has an accent and way of speaking that stands out.”

“She’ll be fine,” Zoy said. “There are hundreds of thousands of people in the city from all across the Empire and the old lands. She won’t stick out that much, and people won’t know what a Gehtun accent sounds like.” She shrugged. “Most of them, anyway. And we’ll just keep her away from people that might, like the senior Army people.”

Staring at the group of them, Fia took a deep breath. It felt insurmountable… but she’d taken on those kinds of odds in the past and won. Yes, she’d cheated back then, but still, with this crew…

She liked her odds.

#

Lord Faalk ava Geroold of House Rechneesse

“I don’t like these odds,” Faalk muttered as he scanned the reports on the table. From what he could see, the Gehtun were attacking the western third of the kingdom, as well as making probing attacks on the northern border. Ironically, Rechneesse was among the safest, being in the general south-eastern area of the kingdom.

So of course Fia had to go off as far from home as possible to go poke the bear in the snout.

Not that he could tell that to the other person standing over the table.

“Why not?” Tiimo asked, not looking up from the report he was reading. “From what I’m reading, the barbarians don’t even know how to properly prosecute a war.” He scoffed and waved the papers around, making them rustle. “Look at this. Report after report showing a rapid attack, a skirmish where they wound or kill a small number, and then they pull back before accomplishing anything else. They aren’t softening us up for later attack, or even penetrating deeply enough to be able to make a proper assessment of the local defenses for a followup.”

“But there are a lot of them, and they’re doing a fair bit of damage,” Faalk rebutted.

“Nowhere near as much as they could,” Tiimo replied. “If they wanted to seriously harm us, they could set fire to the groves, rip down some of the canal locks, or do one of these raids against one of the Army’s depots.” He shrugged. “Imagine the damage and cost blowing up just one black powder mill would inflict.”

Faalk grimaced at that image, even as he replied, “Most of those are closer to us here in the south-east, though. Makes transporting them to the Navy easier.”

“Yesss…” Tiimo drawled, “and that just proves my point, that they have no idea what they’re doing against us.” He motioned to the map spread out on the table, set with pins indicating the attacks. “In fact, I’m pretty sure I know what’s going on in their little uncultured heads.”

“And that is?”

“From what we’ve been able to find out, they’re a bunch of rude nomadic horsemen and herders out on the steppes to the west,” Tiimo said, motioning to the far side of the map with a gesture of rustling papers. “So what I think is going on is that this is how they make war among themselves in their little tribes—you come in on horseback, poke and prod your enemy with some quick raids, and fade back into the grasslands, hopefully getting the rest of their enemy’s tribe to chase them for an extended skirmish, perhaps while other elements of their tribe come in for a more protracted raid and loot.”

Faalk frowned, stroking his chin as he looked over the map. It made sense…

“See? They’re used to maneuver warfare; they’re not firing the groves or damaging the other major resources because they’d ordinarily take those sorts of things for themselves. It’s not part of their primitive battle doctrine. But we’re not playing according to their rules. We’re not giving chase, we’re not giving them the extended skirmish battle that would play to their strengths, especially under these conditions. No, we’re going to show them how civilized people make war—with a proper battle, where courageous men stand up and weigh their strength against one another.”

“Plus using cannons,” Faalk said dryly.

“Yes, exactly. I doubt they’ve ever seen a cannon. Imagine what some grapeshot will do to a charge of unprepared cavalry, brother.”

Faalk took a deep breath. He wasn’t as much of a military man as his brother, but he understood the basics of battlefield tactics. There were five basic components to any army: Infantry armed with pikes and other such polearms, archers and the occasional musket-armed skirmisher for missile troops, cavalry on horseback, artillery in the form of cannons and organ guns, and mages as support.

On an open battlefield, trained archers could bleed an infantry formation to death before the slow-moving men could cross the range of the bows. However the archers themselves would be vulnerable to the attack of fast-moving cavalry, who could cross the distance too quickly for the archers to keep at bay. And the cavalry, in turn, would be warded off by the wall of pikes carried by infantry. Artillery, while slow, would be firing into the packed formations of men, unable to miss and inflicting death and injury as they went. And mages would be doing their best to heal the wounded, and attempt to silently close with the artillery batteries, as a single small bolt of lightning could destroy an entire group of cannons.

So ultimately, battlefield doctrine was knowing when to use your best units against the enemy’s weakest. But if the Gehtun didn’t know that doctrine, and simply committed cavalry as his brother was suggesting…

“It would be a bloodbath,” he said quietly.

“Yes, it would. And we are ready to deal with their efforts. Based on what research I’ve been able to dig up, they can’t have more than a hundred thousand men under arms. We have twice that if we call up reserves. We could crush them and then settle those lands beyond the mountains.” He smiled, his teeth showing between his lips like a slash of bone. “And if I distinguish myself on the field… well, then brother, your daughter would have nothing to fear if I end up with my own title out there.”

Faalk scoffed. “You’re claiming the title before you’ve even belted down your hair, much less stepped into the ring.” Kalltii wrestling forbade hair-grabs as a valid wrestling grip outside of certain matches, but it was tradition to restrain one’s hair anyway.

Tiimo snickered and tossed his head, sending his braid waving. “For this bout, I don’t even think I’d need to strap down my hair.”

#

Raavi ava Laargan

Grunting, I pulled the reinforced leather strap tight, bracing my boot against the buckle.

“Think it’ll hold?” Zoy asked from her awkward position underneath the wooden chest; she’d been holding it up against the hull of the Lynx as I’d strapped it into place.

“I hope so!” I said, and pushed against the chest; it barely wobbled. “I’m going to want to check it every stop, though.” I reached down. “Need a hand?”

She rolled out from under the chest and onto her feet in a single smooth motion. “Nah, but thanks.”

I shrugged and looked over the Lynx. The chest we’d just secured contained some of the secondary supplies, like oil for the lamps and such, which had previously occupied the space under one of the benches where the chest of gems and gold was currently sitting. It had taken all of about ten seconds of thinking for me to realize why my original plan of strapping the money chest to the outside of the Lynx was a bad idea.

Lady Fia came up to us. “Are we ready to get underway?”

“I think so. We’ve got all of the supplies squared away, and they’re ready to help us get to the mountain passes.” I motioned towards the group of ancient Gehtun crafters over by the nearby outbuilding; they’d devised an improvised dogsled harness for the Lynx, while the King’s men had gotten about sixty sled dogs together, emptying out a few nearby settlements of their dogs completely. The dogs, which were big and energetic, would be rotated out in teams to pull the Lynx and a few sleds along. From what Illgina had told me, dogsleds and skis were the usual way for the Gehtun to communicate and travel during the winter, but the Lynx was so much bigger than a typical dog sled that it had been a challenge to get enough dogs together, along with the necessary supplies to feed them.

Fortunately, they only needed to get us to the passes in the White Mountains, and then it would be downhill from there, all the way to the Dormelion Empire.

“So the only thing holding us up is Illgina’s mother?” Lady Fia asked.

I fought down a smirk, even as Zoy snickered. “Sounds about right.”

Lady Eslemin, the King’s acknowledged concubine and Illgina’s mother, was… well, ‘not happy’ was an understatement. She didn’t like that her eldest daughter was apparently the best pick to go on this journey, and even though she had accepted that necessity, she really didn’t like that her child was going to be dressed in practical, rugged clothes “unbecoming to her rank and station”.

The doors opened at that moment, and Illgina scurried out, a rucksack slung over her shoulder, her coat of the sort that might send her mother into hysterics.

“Me somewhere hide!” she hissed and tossed the rucksack into the back of the Lynx, followed by vaulting over the top of the side and folding herself between the seats.

Zoy and I shared a look as Lady Fia choked on laughter. “Everything all right?” I asked casually, keeping the laughter as buried as I could make it.

A half-muffled reply of “Yes,” came from the huddled form.

“Well, that’s good.”

“My mother not is, though. My sister my clothes in my workshop wearing. What to touch not, I told her. Listen she hopefully will.”

I paused, remembering the sledgehammer. “You did put all of the sharp and crushing tools away, right?”

“I did, of course. But my sister find them she can.” Illgina sighed. “Wish I do, that my mother understood would, that fancy dress attention to me bring will. But a long fight been that has.”

Zoy coughed. “Heads up.”

I glanced over at the doors, and saw Lady Eslemin standing there, scanning the open plaza at the foot of the tower where we were standing. She had a servant standing at her shoulder, their arms piled high with colorful clothes.

“Raavi, go get those before she comes over here and we have a family argument on our hands.”

Remembering the earlier argument that I’d had a front row seat to, I nodded and walked over. Lady Eslemin said something in the Gehtun tongue to me, but I just shrugged with incomprehension before miming that I’d take the folded clothing from the servant. The Lady said something else—it sounded a bit irked, if not outright irritated—before the servant offloaded the pile into my arms and fled back inside where it was warm and bright.

The Lady huffed before saying something to me and turning back around.

Relieved, I waddled back to the Lynx and deposited the pile of clothes on top of the improvised shelf the strapped trunk formed. “So… what do we do with these?”

“Padding for benches make? Or sell for additional funds we can,” suggested Illgina.

“Works for me,” Lady Fia said. “If not for the fact that you’re so much smaller than me, I’d steal some of them for my own wardrobe.”

“Free feel you are to take,” Illgina said with a sigh. “Appreciate them more you will.”

Fia cackled. “I might take you up on that. I know a tailor who would enjoy adapting them.” Her tone shifted. “But will you be all right? Did you say your goodbyes?”

“Yes. Jealous my half-brother is, and said to me that a sword or one of these ‘multi-tools’ for him back I should bring. My brothers and sisters brave think I am.”

Zoy cocked her head to the side. “And you don’t think so?”

“A question of bravery it not is, but a question of necessity. Needed I am, so go along I will, so that my people survive can.”

“And how do you feel about it?” Zoy pressed.

“Scared, but excited. But my feelings not matter. Serve I must.”

Lady Fia said softly, “From where I stand, that makes you incredibly brave.” She reached down and mussed Illgina’s hair through her hood.

“Mean what, do you? Thought I did that bravery is not fear feeling?”

Fia scoffed. “Only a fool or an idiot doesn’t feel fear. I can get my head cut off and survive, and I still feel fear. Bravery is doing what you need to do despite feeling afraid.”

I considered the Lady’s words. Did that… did that make me brave?

Before I could come to a conclusion, the doors opened again, with Stylio, Oksyna, and Yufemya coming out, carrying a large basket between them and singing as they went—and it was large, big enough to hold a person, with wisps of steam coming off of it.

I groaned. “Where am I going to fit that?”

Zoy snickered. “Have we finally found a teenaged boy who can’t eat everything in sight?” Turning to her, I stuck my tongue out at her, and she cackled.

Stylio and the others arrived a moment later, and set the large wicker basket down before halting their song. Inside the basket, I could see dozens of steaming parcels, each of them wrapped in what looked like leaves or broad blades of grass.

“What are these?”

“Food for us, the mushers, and the dogs, apparently. If I understood the name correctly, they’re called Kulyamani.”

“Very delicious they are,” Illgina’s voice came from the Lynx. “Spiced meat and cheese wrapped in steamed bread.”

Oksyna gave a little jump at her voice before spotting the king’s daughter. “Escaped from your mother, I see?”

“Now hiding. Escape as soon as we leave.”

“Well, sounds like we’re ready. Let’s coordinate with the mushers and get underway. We don’t have time to waste,” Lady Fia said. “We’ve spent too long here already.”

We all made noises of agreement and started making preparations to get going. I worked on getting the clothing we’d just had added to our supplies squared away. Meanwhile, Illgina went over and started organizing the mushers and their dogs, and distributing the food with Stylio’s help. Oksyna, Zoy, and Yufemya checked over the Lynx, making sure that everything was where it should, and Lady Fia coordinated everyone.

In less than an hour the hauling lines connecting the Lynx to the harnesses of the dogs were taut and straining, and we began to move up and away from the Gehtun tower. Slowly at first, but our speed picked up as the dogs pulled us along.

It didn’t take long before the tower began to vanish into the distance; behind me, I heard Oksyna speak.

“You all right?”

I turned around to see Illgina staring back. After a long moment, with the only sounds being the dogs barking, the mushers calling, and the runners sliding over the snow, she said something softly in her native tongue before continuing in my language. “It is… odd. So much time I spent wanting to get away and my own path make, and now… wonder I do.”

Oksyna patted her on the shoulder. “I haven’t had a home in a long time, but I understand, I think.”

Illgina nodded. “Thank you.”

“Raavi, eyes forward!” Lady Fia called, and hurriedly I turned around, putting my attention back on our path. We had a long way to go.

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AN: A bit of news regarding my update schedule; I have a minor in-patient surgical procedure scheduled for two weeks from now. So there will be no update on October 8th, as I'll be recovering in the hospital.